The German discovery of the world
Subtitle: renaissance encounters with the strange and marvelous
By: Christine R. Johnson.
Series: Studies in early modern German history
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780813927121
Subjects: Public opinion -- Germany; Germany -- Intellectual life; America -- Discovery and exploration -- Public opinion
Description: "Current historiography suggests that European nations regarded the New World as an inassimilable "other" that posed fundamental challenges to the accepted ideas of Renaissance culture. The German Discovery of the World presents a new interpretation that emphasizes the ways in which the new lands and peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas were imagined as comprehensible and familiar. In chapters dedicated to travel narratives, cosmography, commerce, and medical botany, Johnson examines how existing ideas and methods were deployed to make German commentators experts in the overseas world, and how this incorporation established the discoveries as new and important intellectual, commercial, and scientific developments."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Johns Hopkins University.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-292) and index.
Table of contents: title: There and back again: the travelers' tales; title: Plotting the discoveries: the cosmographies; title: Accounting for the discoveries: the commercial correspondence; title: Too rich for German blood? The spice trade as an economic, moral, and medical threat; title: The sorrows of young Welser: the commercial misfortunes.